[The Saucepan Man]

Interesting thoughts, Bêthberry. It ties in with the quote that Esty gave at the beginning of this thread suggesting that, in the Ents and the Entwives, Tolkien was, in a very general way, articulating his thoughts on the difference between male and female approaches to nature. My own thoughts in this regard are set out in my first post on this thread.

But I do wonder how far we can take the Entwife/Eve/Sauron analogy. I said in my first post:

In any event, I wonder which approach Tolkien felt more drawn towards. It seems to me that he had some sympathy for both. Neither the Ents nor the Entwives are portrayed as being "wrong", although the description of the Entwives' approach (involving, as it does, a rejection of love of something for its own sake) is perhaps the less sympathetic. And, while he had what might be described as an "unpossessive love” of trees, Tolkien also had a great deal of time for the landscape of rural England which was (and is), like the Shire, tamed to quite a considerable degree. So it seems quite possible to me that, in both The Old Forest Chapter and in this Chapter, with the tale of the Ents and the Entwives, he is working through his own feelings and attitudes to nature.

The approaches of the Entwives and the Hobbits of the Shire seem remarkably similar to me. Treebeard even comments that the Shire seems to him to be a place that the Entwives would have liked. So I am not sure that he was entirely unsympathetic towards the Entwives and their approach to nature.

Although (in reference to the title of this post) I have no doubt that he would have disapproved of their approach taken to its extreme.